Implantable cardiac rhythm management devices (“CRM devices”) are well established therapeutic devices for treating patients who have experienced one or more documented episodes of hemodynamically significant ventricular tachycardia, ventricular fibrillation, bradycardia, or heart failure. Since their clinical inception more than two decades ago, CRM devices have evolved from basic to sophisticated electronic devices that provide physicians with a variety of clinically useful functions with which to treat patients.
Presently, even the most basic of CRM device typically has more than one tachycardia detection criterion, tiered therapy which combines bradycardia support pacing with various antitachycardia pacing modes, low-energy cardioversion, defibrillation, and data logging capabilities. The data logging capabilities within CRM devices have become increasingly important, since the amount of data required for the CRM device operation increases proportionally with the increase in CRM functions. Efficiently processing this large amount of data has become possible with the incorporation of microprocessors and memory within the CRM device.
Once a CRM device has been implanted, the physician interacts with the CRM device through a clinical programmer. The clinical programmer establishes a communication link with the implanted CRM device. The communication link allows instructions to be sent to the electronic circuitry of the CRM device and clinical data regarding the occurrence and treatment of a patient's cardiac arrhythmias and the CRM device's operation to be sent from the electronic circuitry of the CRM device to the clinical programmer. The typical programmer is a microprocessor-based unit that creates a communication link between the implanted CRM device and the programmer, and a graphics display screen that presents a patient's recorded cardiac data and CRM system information to the physician.
As the number of differing health data recorded by CRM device increases with each new generation of CRM device and the number of general patient health data increases, manufacturers and clinicians alike are becoming more sensitive to the role that time-efficient data interpretation plays in the physician's diagnosis of the patient. As CRM devices become increasingly complex, the interpretation of recorded arrhythmic episodes, operation of the CRM device, and the effect of changing a patient's therapy can be a challenging and time-consuming task.
Therefore, a need exists for improved CRM system and programmer technology that facilitates and correlates the identification of relevant information regarding the patient's clinical status. There is a need in the art for a system that correlates multiple data sets and displays same to the physician.